PLAASLIKE ADVIESRAAD | LOCAL ADVISORY BOARD

Plaaslike Adviesraad | Local Advisory Board

Erin Pretorius

University of the Western Cape

Erin is a (morpho-) syntactician by training, and is based at the University of the Western Cape since 2017. She obtained a PhD in Theoretical Syntax in 2017 as a joint degree from Utrecht University (Netherlands) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Since 2019 she has been the principal investigator of The Syntactic Ecology of Kaaps (SEcoKa), which is a project about understanding the morphological and syntactic properties of the Kaapses spoken on and around the Cape Peninsula.

Erin’s primary research interests include (morpho-) syntactic micro-variation in Afrikaans varieties, the syntax-lexicon interface, categorial gradience and hybridity, modelling categorisation in Generative Grammar, and the formal analysis of spatial expressions. Erin’s past work has focused mainly on the cartography and spellout of the adpositional domain in Afrikaans.

Donovan Lawrence

University of the Western Cape

Donovan Lawrence is a senior lecturer in Afrikaans at the University of the Western Cape. He obtained a BA in 1986; a Higher Diploma in Education in 1987; Honours in Afrikaans in 1993; a MA (Cum Laude) in Afrikaans in 1998 and a PhD in 2004. His doctoral thesis investigates the integration of computer technology in the learning and teaching of Afrikaans.

His career started as a high school Afrikaans teacher in 1988 where after he lectured at a teacher’s college and universities including the University of South Africa (UNISA), the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ). In 2018 he accepted a position at the University of the Western Cape where he is currently the Head of the Department Afrikaans and Dutch. He lectures undergraduate courses in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, translation studies and dialect studies. On postgraduate level he supervises Honours and Masters students.

Dr Lawrence is an external moderator for Umalusi and responsible for the quality assurance of matric examination papers in Afrikaans First Additional Language (FAL) and Second Additional Language (SAL).

His recent publications include the articles Afrikaansstudente se gebruik van WhatsApp as leerplatform: ‘n nuwe norm(aal)? (Litnet Akademies 2021) and “Ons skryf soos ons praat”: Informalisering van geskrewe Afrikaans onder Afrikaanse tieners. (Litnet Akademies 2019). Recently he delivered a paper at the 6th Afrikaans Colloquium in Ghent, Belgium. In this paper he investigated the influence of dialect on the writing abilities of Afrikaans students. He is also co-author of the book Afrikaansmetodiek deur ‘n nuwe bril published in 2014.

He is a member of the Pan South African Language Board and the National Language Committee for Afrikaans. Dr Lawrence is also the writer of regular opinion pieces in the Afrikaans newspapers Beeld, Burger and Volksblad.

Michael Le Cordeur

Stellenbosch University

Prof Michael le Cordeur is Full professor and NRF-rated researcher. Currently he chairs the Department of Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University (SU) and teaches Afrikaans Education at under- and postgraduate level. A language teacher by trade, he is a former high school principal and Circuit Manager in the Western Cape Education Department.

Le Cordeur holds a Masters and a doctorate (PhD) from Stellenbosch University, an Honours from the University of the Western Cape, a B.Ed from UNISA and the Senior Management Diploma cum laude from Stellenbosch University’s Graduate School of Business.

His research and publications deal with learners’ reading and writing skills, and language in education. He is the author/ co-author/ editor of 37 books and school textbooks, 15 book chapters, 32 refereed articles, 23 book reviews, 36 reviews for accredited journals and has presented 62 papers nationally and 27 papers internationally. He acted as external examiner for 7 PhD and 9 Masters theses (for UP, NWU, CPUT, UWC, UFS, Unisa, SU). He is the moderator of all undergraduate modules in Afrikaans Education for NWU, the CPUT, UWC and UFS.

Since 2012 he was the head of the BEd programme and in 2014 he was promoted to senior lecturer in Language Education. As from 1 January 2016 he has been Chair of the Department Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education. Prof le Cordeur have successfully supervised 3 doctoral and 5 masters students. In 2017 he was appointed as Associate Professor and in 2019 as a Full Professor.

He is a regular columnist for various newspapers and media houses with his own column, Swartbord, in Netwerk24 and Die Burger. To date he has published more than 300 opinion pieces and is regularly called upon to comment on language and education issues by all forms of media. As a result he is one of the first recipients of the Media Award of Excellence (2018 & 2019) recognising him as one of SU’s Thought Leaders.

Prof Le Cordeur has served the community in various leadership positions: As chair of the Western Cape Language Committee for two consecutive terms, he is one of the authors of the Western Cape Language Policy. Currently he serves on the board of directors of the SBA, is a trustee of Het Jan Marais Fundand and an Executive member and Deputy Chair of the Stigting vir Bemagting deur Afrikaans (SBA). He was an executive member of the South African Academy for Arts and Science. and a member of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA). On international level he is a member of the Internationale Centrum voor het Afrikaans at Gent University (Belgium) as well as the International Association for L1 languages (ARLE).

Prof le Cordeur received various awards: he was recognized by the South African Academy for his contribution to education (2008) and received the Rector’s Award for five consecutive years (2010 – 2014, now discontinued), a ministerial award for multilingualism (2012), the Premier Award (1997) for Community Service, Stellenbosch University’s prestigious Chancellors Award (2014), the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the Struggle in Schoolsp[ort (2019), and the Neville Alexander Lifetime Award for his contribution to the promotion of Afrikaans (2020).

Hein Willemse

University of Pretoria

Hein Willemse was born in Ladismith in the Little Karoo. On account of his father’s work as a postman the family moved to Mossel Bay and later to Worcester where he completed his schooling in 1975 at Esselen Park High School. He completed several junior and postgraduate degrees at the University of the Western Cape and the University of South Africa.

He taught at the University of Western Cape and is a former head of the Department of Afrikaans at the University of Pretoria. He has served as a visiting professor at several local and foreign universities, including universities in Central and North America, the rest of Africa and Europe. He is also a former President of the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA).

Since his student days he worked as a stringer, reporter or columnist in various student, community and alternative publications. For a period, he was the executive director of OLM Publications, a literacy publisher. He served as the editor-in-chief of Tydskrif vir letterkunde, a leading academic journal from 2002 to 2019. He is presently a columnist for the Afrikaans newspapers, Die Burger and Beeld.

His research interest focuses mainly on South African literature and the Afrikaans oral traditions. His publications include Aan die ander kant: Swart Afrikaanse Skrywers in die Afrikaanse letterkunde (2007), and edited or co-edited books such as More than Brothers: James Matthews and Peter Clarke at 70 (2000), Achmat Davids’s The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims (2011), Hostel (2018), and Onverdrote vlyt — ’n geskiedenis van die Departement Afrikaans aan die Universiteit van Pretoria (2020).

He was acknowledged for his work with the Heritage Award (2000) by the Western Cape Ministry of Culture and the Afrikaans Onbeperk award by the board of the Klein-Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (2002). In 2020 he received the award for the Best long essay review for 2019 and his documentary film Die versteekte geskiedenisse van Afrikaans — The hidden histories of Afrikaans (2018) was nominated for the 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Award of the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Nathan Trantraal

Author, Rhodes

Nathan Trantraal was born in Cape Town in 1983, the third of six children. He is married to Ronelda Kamfer, they have a daughter called Seymour and a cat named Sugar. They live a very quiet life in the Eastern Cape. He is a poet, cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, translator, columnist, reviewer, editor and graphic designer.

He holds a master’s degree in creative writing at Rhodes University. At Rhodes University’s School of Languages, he developed and teaches the course’s Kaaps and graphic novel components. He has won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for poetry, the Jan Rabie/Marjorie Wallace Bursary for his comics and The Pendoring Gold Prize for graphic design. He has made cartoons for The Cape Times, The Cape Argus and writes a bi-weekly column for Rapport, for which he was awarded a SALA. His work has been exhibited in Cape Town, Munich and Amsterdam.

His poetry collections include, Chokers en Survivors, Alles het niet kom wôd and Oolog (all published with Kwela Uitgwers) Chokers en Survivors was translated into French as Vache enragée (ÉDITIONS LANSKINE). He has written one collection of columns, Wit issie ŉ colour nie (Kwela). As a cartoonist some of his work includes, Stormkaap (Tafelberg), Coloureds (Jincom publishers) and Crossroads (PM Press).

Andre Trantraal

Author, children story books

Andre Trantraal, 41, is an illustrator, writer and translator. He grew up in the townships of Mitchell’s Plain and Bishop Lavis and is therefore intimately acquainted with the social conditions as well as the less newsworthy but equally as relevant ordinary human face of people who call these places home.

Much of his work is written in Kaaps and he is a pioneer in recording, through cartoons, children’s books, comic book stories and translations, this particular language. His first published work was a continuity cartoon strip, which he wrote and partly illustrated, that appeared in the Cape Argus in 2003. His comic art has been exhibited in Hamburg and Amsterdam as well as in Cape Town. He wrote and partly illustrated a graphic novel, Drome Kom Altyd Andersom Uit, which appeared in 2008, as well as a comic book, Coloureds, that appeared in 2010. He adapted historian Koni Benson’s doctoral thesis on the history of women’s political struggles into a serialized graphic history titled Crossroads, which was first published between 2010 and 2016. He contributed artwork for an illustrated adaptation of a report by a commission, headed by Kate ‘O Regan and Vusi Pikoli, which was tasked with investigating police incompetence and brutality in Khayelitsha. A weekly cartoon strip that he wrote, The Richenbaums, appeared in the Cape Times between 2010 and 2015. A second cartoon strip, titled Ruthie, about a black family living in apartheid-era South Africa, which he partly illustrated, ran for a year in Rapport. Trantraal is the author and illustrator of the Afrikaans children’s book series, Keegan and Samier. He also translated the middle grade novel Ghost, by American author Jason Reynolds, into Kaaps. He has made artistic contributions to the Rock Girl project, an initiative concerned with the empowerment of girls of primary school age in disadvantaged communities. He also provided dialogue consultancy services to the film City of Violence, starring Forest Whitaker, which was filmed in Cape Town.

Ronelda Kamfer

Author

Ronelda Sonnet Kamfer was born in Cape Town. She spent part of her childhood on a farm in Grabouw, where her grandparents were farm workers. Her debut volume, Noudat Slapende Honde (2008), won the Eugène Marais Prize. Her second book, grond/Santekraam, won the Absa Kanna Award in (2012). She was a writer in residence in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and in La Rochelle, France.

Her third collection, Hammie, was published in 2016 and fourth in Chinatown (2019). Her work has been translated into Dutch by Alfred Schaffer, Nu de Slapende Honde (2009), Santenkraam (2012), Mammie (2017) and Chinatown (2021) by Podium Uitgeverij Amsterdam, Italian, Terra / E tutto il resto (2018) by Raffaelli Editore en Frans (2021), Caracters Editore in Paris. She completed her MA degree at Rhodes University in 2018. Her debut novel, Kompoun, will be published October 2021 by Kwela Publishers. She is currently working on a fifth volume of poetry and a collection of short stories.

Earl Basson

Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Earl Basson is a lecturer in the Intermediate Phase at the Faculty of Education of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, where he teaches Afrikaans and Methodology of Afrikaans teaching. Previously, he worked as a publishing assistant at NB Publishers, a multi-grade teacher at Groote Schuur Hospital School, head tutor and co-curriculum designer at the Humanities Extended Degree Program of Stellenbosch University and a homeroom teacher at Capricorn Primary School.

He was also a part of the UCDG Multilingual MobiLex Project, where he was responsible for the translation and editing of Afrikaans-English subject terminology lists.

In 2013 he obtained a BA Language and Culture with Afrikaans and Dutch and General Linguistics as majors. He continued his studies and in 2015 he received the HonsBA Afrikaans and Dutch and Postgraduate Certificate in Education. In 2017, he attended the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s summer school and completed the Doing Research with Discourse Analysis course with distinction. He received his master’s degree with distinction in 2018 and was also named the top M.Ed student. He is currently working on his doctoral degree in Afrikaans and Dutch at Stellenbosch University. His study focuses on the restandardisation of Afrikaans and Kaapse Afrikaans in the classroom.

He has presented his research at various national conferences and an international research workshop. He is also involved in numerous projects, i.a., the Words Open Worlds’ debate competition, the Afrikaanse Taalraad’s Curriculum Initiative, the inter-institutional research project Ontlaering/Unlaagering, the UJ literary awards and the Afrikaans language and culture podcast, Sitkamer. He has published academic research and book reviews and most recently acted as the guest editor of the latest edition of the Stilet journal. In 2020, he was the recipient of Ghent University’s Africa-Ghent research fellowship. He will be joining the Ghent Centre for Afrikaans for two months where he will do research on status and corpus planning and its implications for Kaapse Afrikaans in the classroom.

He is passionate about linguistics, literature and language in education. He describes himself as a relentless language activist and views the classroom as a restoration space for linguistic injustices.

Olivia Coetzee

Author

Olivia was born in Mariental, a small town in the southern parts of Namibia, and grew up in Electric City, Eerste Rivier. She completed her high school in 1999 and began her tertiary education 11 years later. Olivia’s professional experience ranges from retail work to volunteering and activism.

Olivia is an alumnus of the University of the Western Cape, where she completed her undergraduate degree and honour’s degree, as well as an alumnus of the University of Cape Town where she pocketed her master’s degree in Creative Writing in July 2017. She plans to continue her academic career, working on PhD research around the history of Kaaps, and hopes to add to the growing volume of Kaaps literature.

Olivia was part of a local poetry workshop, in search for her voice. During this writing period, she started understanding the importance of her writing within the greater spheres of Southern African literature. She, however, only later in her writing career understood the importance of writing in her mother tongue, and the impact this had on the material she produced and the people who read her work. But it was in the space of higher learning education where she discovered the power of her creative writing voice.

Olivia’s creative writing work has been published on different platforms. Although she is a late buddying artist, her skill with words and her unique voice, brought her the opportunity to write for an independent online journal, Litnet. She is a freelancing writer and translator on this platform and her work is currently only published in Kaaps. The content she published on Litnet ranges from poetry, opinion-pieces, and the translation.

Olivia made her writing debut with her novel “Innie Shadows” that was published in December of 2019. She is currently translating “Innie Shadows” from Kaaps into English. She aspires to continue her success in writing, by writing in her mother tongue. Through her current work, she hopes to inspire and challenge others to not be scared, but to own their identity. Her work is available for reading and sharing on litnet.co.za.

Diana Ferrus

Author, Poet

Diana Ferrus works as an administrator at the University of Western Cape. She is interested in recording the stories of black Afrikaans women, and wants to publish an anthology of short stories. This is after she did extensive research about black Afrikaans women writers.

Diana is wellknown for her poem about the Khoisan woman Sarah Baartman whose remains were on display in Paris until 1986. In 2002 Diana read her poem for Sarah Baartman at the handing over of the remains to the South African government. “Iv’e come to take you home, home! Remember the veld, the lush green grass beneath the big oak trees, the air is cool there”. This poem will be the title poem of her English poetry collection due for publication in August 2010.

Shirmoney Rhode

Author, Poet

Shirmoney Rhode is a writer and performance poet who grew up on the Cape Flats in Elsies River. She completed her BA, BA-Hon (Afrikaans) and PGCE at the University Of the Western Cape. She predominantly writes in Kaapse Afrikaans, which is the dialect of Afrikaans spoken in the Western Cape.

She started writing at the age of 13. She is passionate about telling the stories of people in her community and performs her work on different platforms in Cape Town. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Nomme 20 Delphi Straat and she has performed her work on different platforms in South Africa. She currently teaches Afrikaans at Claremont High School in Cape Town.

Frank Hendricks

University of the Western Cape

Frank Hendricks is sedert 1979 verbonde aan die Departement Afrikaans en Nederlands aan die Universiteit van Wes-Kaapland. In 1978 verwerf hy die MA-graad in Afrikaans en Nederlands (cum laude) met die verhandeling “? Sinchronies-diachroniese studie van die taalgebruik in die drama Kanna hy kô hystoe van Adam Small” en in 1988 doktoreer hy met die proefskrif “Prolepsis in Afrikaans”.

As taalkundige spesialiseer hy in sintaksis, variasietaalkunde en naamkunde. Die literêre refleksie van histories gemarginaliseerde spreektaalvariëteite is een van sy primêre navorsingsgebiede.

Wannie Carstens

North-West University

Prof. Wannie Carstens retired from the NWU (Potchefstroom) at the end of 2017 as professor of Afrikaans linguistics after also teaching at both the University of Stellenbosch (1977-1979) and the University of Cape Town (1980-1991) in his earlier career.

He remains involved with the NWU as an extraordinary professor in Afrikaans linguistics in the research unit on languages and literature in the Faculty of Humanities after his retirement. He was director of the School of Languages on this campus for 16 years.

He serves or has served on various structures affecting Afrikaans, including as a founding member and first chairperson of the reconciliation driven Afrikaans Language Board (ATR; 2008-2011), chairperson of the Board of the SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (SA Academy for Science and Arts) (2011-2014), as well as chairperson of the Council of the Afrikaanse Taalmuseum en -monument (2011-2014) and he was also a member of the Council of Stellenbosch University (2010-2018). He was also deputy chair of the Board of PanSALB (2014-2016).

During his career he taught Afrikaans linguistics at various universities in the USA and Europe. In 2018 he was guest lecturer in Afrikaans linguistics at Leiden University (February – May 2018) and also guest professor (as second incumbent of the chair “Zuid-Afrika: Talen, literaturen, culture and maatschappij”) at the University of Ghent where he lectured Afrikaans linguistics (September – December. Since 2008 he has the status of guest professor at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

He co-founded the Ernst van Heerden Collection of Afrikaans poetry in the Poëziecentrum (Poetry Centre) in Ghent, Belgium and was involved in the establishment of various collaboration and exchange agreements with universities and other institutions in the Low Countries. As a result of this in 2020 the prestigious achievement prize of the Van Ewijck Foundation’s was awarded to him for his work promoting ties between the Netherlands and South Africa.

He twice received the CJ Langenhoven Prize for Linguistics from the SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns – in 2003 as co-recipient for his contribution to the 9th edition of the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls, as well as in 2021 for his life-time work contributing to the scientific study of Afrikaans linguistics. In 2014 he received the ATR’s Koker Award (2014) for his work promoting Afrikaans.

As a rated NRF researcher (since 2003), he is the sole author of two academic books (Norme vir Afrikaans, 6th edition 2018), Afrikaanse Tekslinguistiek (1997) and of four as co-author, namely Teksredaksie (2010, 2012; with Prof Kris van de Poel of the University of Antwerp), Text Editing (2012; with Kris van de Poel and John Linnegar) and Die storie van Afrikaans: uit Europe en van Afrika, part 1 (2017; with Prof Edith Raidt) as well as part 2 of this book (March 2019). Part 1 deals with the European history of Afrikaans and part 2 focuses on the history of Afrikaans in Africa. He is also co-editor of Kontemporêre Afrikaanse Taalkunde (2014, 2017; with Prof Nerina Bosman) and of Ons kom van vêr (2016, with Prof Michael le Cordeur; revised, 2nd edition 2019). He is co-editor of two soon to be published new books (early 2022), one on Applied Linguistics in Afrikaans as well as one on Contemporary Afrikaans Linguistics.

Dion Nkomo

Rhodes University

Dion Nkomo is an Associate Professor of African Language Studies at the School of Languages and Literatures at Rhodes University. He is presently serving as the NRF SARChI Chair for Intellectualisation of African Languages, Multilingualism and Education (on an interim basis).

He obtained a B.A. Honours (with distinction) in African Languages from the University of Zimbabwe (2003), an MPhil. (Cum Laude) Lexicography (2008) and a PhD in Lexicography (2012) from Stellenbosch University, as well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in Higher Education from Rhodes University (2014).

Prof Nkomo previously worked as a lexicographer under the African Languages Lexical (ALLEX) Project (University of Zimbabwe) where he produced a Ndebele Dictionary of Music Terms, Isichazamazwi SezoMculo in 2006), and a language practitioner under the University of Cape Town’s Multilingualism Education Project (2009 – 2011). Apart from lexicography, his other areas of academic interests include language planning and policy, multilingualism, language teaching, translation, terminology and, lately, higher education studies. He has published and supervised post-graduate students working on various aspects of applied language studies. His work appears as articles in Lexikos, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, International Journal of Lexicography and Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America and edited books. He is an African Humanities Programme fellow under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, a recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award for 2016 at Rhodes University, a C2 National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

He is a member of editorial boards for several academic journals, and a member of national bodies and research networks working on African languages. He is the Secretary of AFRILEX, the African Association for Lexicography (since 2017), the Vice Chairperson of Globalex, the global alliance of continental associations of lexicography and the Acting Chairperson of the Board of the isiXhosa National Lexicography Unit.

Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT)

Die wesensaard van die Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal word grootliks bepaal deur sy eiesoortigheid en die spesifieke plek van hierdie woordeboek binne die breë tipologiese verskeidenheid.

Die Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT) is ’n omvattende sinchroniese verklarende woordeboek, d.w.s. primêr gerig op die huidige taalgebruik. So ’n woordeboek moet op ’n omvattende manier verslag doen van die woordeskat van Afrikaans. Die omvattendheid van die WAT lê op drie vlakke: die opname van die Afrikaanse woordeskat in sy wydste omvang, die groot verskeidenheid tipes inligting wat in die bewerking aangebied word asook die omvang van die bewerking.

Kontak Os

021 959 9398

dwkaaps@uwc.ac.za

Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR)
University of the Western Cape
Robert Sobukwe Road
Private Bagx17
Bellville
7535
SOUTH AFRICA